WOW I haven't written a post in AGES!! wow. I've been too busy holidaying my bad!! haha. Hope you are all having a wonderful holidays season. Summer is again upon us but I do wish we had a bit more sunshine!! Can't complain I suppose it is lovely and warm just a tad muggy :S

BUT anyhoos.. Thought I'd post a few fav pix from my holidays. I went to on a little shopping trip to Melbourne and just went a tad bit crazy on the shopping LOL. I have since paid off my credit card and I am sooo proud of myself LMAO. I thought I was gonna have to get a personal loan there for a min but I was all good... :D

yeah like I said.. I went a little crazy haha i love this massive shopping bag!! Bridge road all the way =) (Bridge road is a famous road in Melbourne known for outlet stores)

Being a tourist means its acceptable to take pictures of anything and everything haha. I generally take pix of things I find interesting that we don't normally see back at home. Loved the wall art down town and also inside the casino they had that fabulous sparkly roof. it was amazing. Couldn't really capture how cool it was in a picture but I tried =)

It was great to catch up with my old friend Korina too who lives in Melbourne.. Everytime I go visit her I'm always like I need to move here ha ha.. i love melbourne.. =) Shopping is insane =)

Yes I've been a bit AWOL of late. :S But anyway I'm back again YAY lol. Alot of stuff has been going on with me and so this blog has kinda been put on the back burner. Sorry about that!

So I was naughty and didn't go on the 8th photowalk in Rotorua. The guys had a great time down there even though it was a little bit wet it didn't stop them! Good on them. I think I was feeling just a tad bit lazy that day :S my bad... we all have our days right?!

So I was greatly looking forward to this one. And seeing as this post is so late.. I'll make it quick with just a few of my favs. Hope you enjoy the pics that follow from our 9th photowalk (can you believe it?!) at Eden Gardens :)

My friend Terence doin his thang:

Pretty Autumn leaves! :

Joy looking so cute in her hat! :

My favourite Tree in the whole garden:

Pretty white flowers :

Lots of joy was found :) :

Terence getting started even before we got inside! hehe:

Blossoms:

Short post this time.. next photowalk is coming up soon yay! I missed the previous one :S :S just so much stuff going on I have been too busy *cry* I couldn't make the 10th one because I was doing a skydive!! that was sooo awesome.... :D Might do a seperate post on that :D

Ok., so I haven't splashed out on a blackberry or an iphone or anything.. But I love my new phone! Yes its pink :P But the reason I really love this baby is the 5MP camera.... Yeah so its not that HUGE but hey its a phone for crying out loud!

mmmm shiny LOL

I took some shots with it last friday at work and with the niece and nephew on the weekend and I was just so incredibly impressed by the size and quality of the photos. Crisp, vibrant colour and even when I cropped, the detail is still there. Top marks from me :-)

Swan chicks!! awww cuties

And to top it off.. the price was fantastic :-) I got it from 3deals for less than half its RRP (about $230 incl shipping I think it was). WOOO nice one :-)

Here is my old phone, which I still love by the way. I'm handing it over to my mum to use. (mm yes look at those scratches LOL - I'm so clumsy, multiple drops onto concrete :P still works! *WIN*)

It's still good , plays up sometimes on the keypad but not often. Still a decent phone. My mum still owns one of those very old nokias haha.. with the green screen. WOW lol :P I think its a Nokia 1100

So yeah... all in all I'm very happy with the purchase. Doug also bought one in silver but he's having problems with the phone accepting his sim. Still working with 3deals to get this sorted. ITs very annoying!

Last pic with my camera phone. Me pulling funny faces haha. It has a flash on it too, which I don't recommend you look straight into because its like looking straight into the sun - it will literally BLIND you O_o

Hope you all had a fabulous weekend! I missed out on my clubs photowalk this month :(. I decided not to go with them to Rotorua.. it was just too risky (in terms of the weather) for my liking. But heard they had a fab time anyways! Can't wait to see everyones photos :-)

I started writing this blog post ages ago but never got around to writing it up! Life gets so busy sometimes doesn't it! Anyway I have finally sat down to do it so here it is!

I wanted to write about this lil trick I came across in Photoshop elements because well its just cool ok! Sometimes its not appropriate but it can really add something special to a shot when used correctly. See below a picture I took of a forest up at Orewa (Alice Eaves Scenic Reserve). I was trying to get a nice sun flare by including the sun in my shot and hiding it with the tree in the foreground. I'm still perfecting this skill and I know that it also depends on the lens that you have but I still got a pretty cool flare there. But by using photoshop you can REALLY up the ante with your flare.

All you need to do is go to Filter > Render > Lens Flare (see below for the menus). FYI I'm using Photoshop Elements V4. yeah yeah I know I need an upgrade ha ha ha. It still works for me for now!

Now there's all sorts of different flares that you can add to your picture. What I like to do is to try a few out and see which one looks the best (and or the most natural if that is what you are going for). All you have to do is point the Flare centre to the source of the light by using your mouse. Its very easy! For this photo I decided to use the 50-300mm Zoom flare. I like the obvious circle it makes! pwetty :-)

Just wanted to do another quick post to share my latest and favouritest (ok not a word but I wanted it to rhyme lol) pictures of Dryke. He's grown so much in the time that we've had him and I just love him to bits. His personality has really developed and he just adores both Doug and I. He always pushes his luck with us but he's just so loyal, constantly happy and its just so hard to stay mad at him even when he is naughty!! I love these photos of him at the beach because I feel his personality just really shines through. He loves it at the beach., digging here and there and running around in a crazy fashion.. its fun to watch ;-)

Oh by the way., have no idea what beach this is ay. I couldn't find the name of it., but its around Hellensville way (West Auckland).

Oh isn't he so cute! hehe. Honestly you might think he looks scary but he's such a sweetheart xo

In terms of my photography., I've really been pushing myself lately to use manual (most of the time I'm lazy and just use Aperture priority mode :P). It can be difficult at times and sometimes not appropriate, but I find it much better having control over both shutter speed and aperture to get the exposure that I want. Especially if I want to over expose it slightly to blow out the background as in the below photo. (This is Dryke's ball hehe)

I tend to focus on the shutter speed these days., just because I want my shutter speed to be fairly fast most of the time to make sure my photo's come out sharp and not blurry. If I just can't get my aperture low enough , I just bump up the ISO slightly and it tends to work! :P Also with a fiddly subject like Dryke who is constantly moving, I need a fairly fast shutter speed to freeze the motion. Photography is an art., sometimes it takes a bit of trial an error to get the shot you want. Anyway that's what I've been experimenting with lately!

Happy Weekend All!

PS: sorry I don't know why my comments function isn't working. ARGH! I'm working on getting that fixed! If someone has an idea why it might not be working, please do send me a message. (I've now added a contact me tab :P)

Meloa reef., Meola reef. Where the heck is that you ask? lol. Well here's the google map :P(Sorry for my crap as scribble on it lol) . If you can't read the small font, the X is where the Auckland Zoo is.

And here's a little bit of info from good ol Wikipedia :-)

The Meola Reef, or Te Tokaroa Reef in Māori is a lava flow forming a reef peninsula across part of Auckland's Waitemata Harbour, New Zealand. It was formed 20,000 years ago from the final portion of a 10 kilometer long lava flow that originated from the distant Three Kings volcano.The reef extends for over 2 kilometers across the Waitemata Harbour, to within 500 meters of Kauri Point, on the northern shore.

The reef is easily seen in the west from the Auckland Harbour Bridge at low tide, when much of it lies exposed. The best viewpoint is at Kauri Point, the headland to the east of Kendall Bay. The portion of the reef close to shore is covered by mangroves, and further out, the rocks are covered by rock oysters, then bare. Strong footwear is needed to walk on the lava.

I had absolutely no idea this was here. It was nice to do something different on our photowalk -a slightly more challenging walk than we normally do. It was very rocky and you need to watch where you step otherwise you would get stuck in the mud... literally lol. So glad I bought my gum boots along with me. But I actually really enjoyed it. Here are some of my favourite shots from the localation -

An interesting red plant. Sorry I'm no good with plant names!

Wideangle shot of the reef. You can see the rocks are covered with Oysters!

This part was much easier to walk..We spotted some others out on the other side. Thought they were part of our group but actually they weren't lol. Lucky we didn't start yelling out to them ay? lol.

A lost feather

I just love love love circular bokeh and the pretty green colour of this lichen.

And next stop was - Western Springs! Everyone knows western springs right? The water is kinda dirty., but no worry.. we can make that look pretty with reflections!

Ok., the following photo was a total fluke.. haha but I love it. I'm totally amazed the sparrow is in focus because I didn't even adjust my settings (had no time to). And the birdie is even looking the right way. *total WIN*

Bird taking flight.

Colourful reflections :-)

Epic clouds. You know I love clouds.. I love the deep blue of the sky. I admit this was slightly enhanced but the colour is true (just deepened slightly)

Ok so the water looks gorgeous right? If you're an Aucklander you know Western Springs is dirty as haha. But you wouldn't know it ay? They make for gorgous reflections - true story!

And I'm really proud of the photo below, I just love the way the ripple looks so smooth. The added feather with its own reflection was just a gorgeous little bonus.

Nothing to say about this one., I just like it so in it goes lol.

And close up shot of the fern

I included this one because of the bend in the tree. Thought it gave an interesting element to the generic tree silhouette picture.

And to end this very long post (hopefully not too long!) some geese! The reflections are almost like a mirror no?

I'll be heading down to the snow this weekend and I can't wait! First time this season so its very exciting. Some friends are coming over from Australia so we want to show them around! Hopefully the weather is kind. You can never be 100% sure of what its going to do on the day.

Have a great rest of the week people! Hope ya keeping dry in this drissly weather :/